


Five Things That Broke Danny's Brain (and one he could get used to)

by Steerpike13713



Series: Vlad Fenton AU [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Be Careful What You Wish For, F/M, Gen, Multi, Reality Bending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 13:53:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10023668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: From a tumblr prompt, asking for Danny's first day in his new world, plus a bit of world-building for the new timeline before we get into the big storylines.In which Danny Fenton gets an(other) up-close look at the consequences of his meddling, and begins to wonder if he really is going mad.





	

In a fair and reasonable world, Danny ought to have had at least a few moments of blissful ignorance before panic set in. Unfortunately, he did not live in a fair or reasonable world, and so there was no vague sense of bad news lurking somewhere in the back of his brain, no few moments of thinking the world was working as normal and the whole thing had just been a terrible dream. Danny went from being sound asleep to awake in a world where _his parents were involved with Vlad_ in the space of about ten seconds. It was not, on the whole, the best way to wake up. He was tired, too, because he’d kept waking up at odd intervals in the night to panic about what this meant and how long he would be stuck with it, because Clockwork couldn’t have meant to leave him in this world forever, right? This was just one more test, he knew it. He just wasn’t quite sure what it was Clockwork wanted to test him for.

The first horrible surprise of the day ought, therefore, not to have been a surprise at all, but was, because some things manage to be horrible surprises no matter how inevitable they are. When he finally went through to the kitchen, Vlad was there and so was Maddie, which he should’ve expected, but didn’t. There was no sign, now, of the ecto-acne. Not even a couple of lingering scars, which was unfair. There was something profoundly unnatural about the sight of Vlad making toast (ordinary-shaped toast, even!) while Maddie fussed with the coffeemaker, occupying the same space so easily and naturally that you’d hardly guess that in the real timeline, the one he had destroyed, she could hardly stand to be in the same room as him.

“-tried reversing the polarity?” Vlad was saying. “It might limit the extent of the icing problem, if we can’t remove it entirely.”

“No, I haven’t,” Maddie said, then frowned, “But that might make it harder to catch Plasmius and Phantom – the heat signature’s too variable, and they’re slippery enough as it is.”

“True – but they’ve already shown they can slip out of containment easily enough,” Vlad started, and then spotted Danny. “You’re up early,” he said, “Sit down, breakfast should be ready in a minute – as I was saying, Maddie…”

Danny stood frozen for a moment, and sat down less because he’d been told to than because he was afraid his knees would give out if he didn’t. He couldn’t breathe – his chest felt tight and painful, and he could only get out a few short, sharp breaths, which sounded too loud even to him.

“Danny?” his mom asked, frowning, “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Danny ground out, staring at the table and trying not to see Vlad looking at him too, with concern written all over his smug face. Well, not so smug here, but that…that wasn’t something _anyone_ should be asked to deal with first thing in the morning. _It’s alright_ , he told himself. _Dad’s here too, Vlad hasn’t won._ It didn’t work. All it did was call up the memory of what _else_ had changed here.

He’d gone through yesterday like a sleepwalker. Vlad had still been too weak to join them for dinner, had slept through most of the evening, so things had been very nearly normal, and Danny had gone to bed still in too much shock to process it all. Now, apparently, his brain was playing catch-up and going too fast for his liking.

“Uh…where’s Dad?” he asked, glancing up for a moment and wishing he hadn’t.

Vlad looked up, “Down in the lab, I expect.”

“Yes, that’s right – some damage to the Spectre Speeder,” Maddie added. “Not sure how that happened – we’ve hardly had the chance to try it out yet.”

Danny looked down at the table to escape Vlad’s gaze. There was no way the frootloop could know, right? Ok, he seemed to know about Danny, but that didn’t mean anyone else did – he needed to ask Sam and Tucker about that, and about everything else he’d missed in this weird world he was supposed to be living in until Clockwork finally gave in.

“I don’t imagine you have any idea, do you, Danny?” Vlad asked, in the same fake-casual tone he always used when hinting he might tell. Some things didn’t change no matter _what_ shape you bent the timeline into, it seemed.

Danny shrugged, “Nope. Nothing to do with me.”

A plate of toast was deposited under his nose, and Danny frowned. Usually, it was kind of a given that he and Jazz could get breakfast for themselves, even if Jazz sometimes insisted on fixing it for both of them out of some misguided sense of responsibility. And if Vlad had made it, he _definitely_ wasn’t eating it, even if it was only toast.

“Vati! Have you seen my bio notes?” Jazz’s voice called from somewhere upstairs, which was probably the only thing saving Danny from being interrogated about why he wasn’t eating. Everywhere he looked, he saw something subtly wrong. Vlad in casual clothes and – had he needed glasses in the old timeline? Danny was pretty sure he hadn’t. The same cat he’d seen yesterday, sitting on the table and looking down its feline nose at him. Jazz, when she stuck her head around the door to say she’d found the bio notes, wearing a green-and-gold headband instead of her usual turquoise one. The utter lack of ectoplasm-powered equipment in the kitchen and the Packers figurine on the windowsill. His mom, leaning quite casually against Vlad’s side to let him look at her schematics and ask questions – Vlad talking to her at all, in a form that wasn’t awful, awful attempts at seduction. Because he didn’t need to seduce her – she was, through some horrific twist of fate, already seduced. And so was his dad, which…no. Just no. It wasn’t that Danny had anything against the gay thing. He’d met his mom’s ex-girlfriend Harriet at the reunion, and liked her well enough, and if his meddling had somehow changed things so that Maddie was suddenly a guy or Jack was a woman, that would have fazed him a hell of a lot less than this did. It was just…well, _Vlad_. It was only sensible to be worried about having screwed the world up enough that the guy who’d tried to kill his dad Danny did not know _how_ many times in the last year alone was now involved with him, even if in this world those things _probably_ hadn’t happened. ‘Probably’ being the operative word in that particular sentence. Possibly this Vlad was just a better actor than the one Danny knew, and had agreed to all this just so Maddie would agree to get involved with him. Maybe, even now, he was plotting to get Jack out of the way and what Danny had seen between them yesterday was just to lure Jack and Maddie into a false sense of security. Stranger things had happened.

“-will want to come over to look at the new Fenton Wrist Rays,” Maddie was saying now, and Danny looked up hastily, trying to ignore the sight of Vlad Masters leaning against the counter eating toast behind her, “Danny, could you tell her they’re finished, please?”

“Uh…sorry, who?”

His mother gave him a reproving look, “Well, _Valerie_ of course – who else! She’s been looking for a nice, portable anti-ghost weapon for weeks now – oh, she is going to be a _magnificent_ ghost-hunter in a few years.”

Danny shifted nervously. “Uh…yeah,” he muttered. “She seems pretty good at it _now_.”

Vlad was trying to catch his eye again, but Danny ignored him. Whatever it was Vlad wanted to say to him, he could say it out loud and risk whatever Maddie and Jazz thought of it. Or, better still, he could keep it to himself and never, ever talk to Danny again. That would be pretty much ideal. Danny had bigger things to worry about. For a start, when had his parents started working with Valerie? Ok, they were roughly on the same side, but Val was a hell of a lot more likely to get a shot in at Danny than either Jack or Maddie ever had been.

“She’s very talented,” Vlad agreed, in such a carefully neutral tone of voice that Danny _knew_ something was up. Oh, crap, was Vlad still funding her? Ok, if he were, Danny didn’t see why she’d be after Fenton tech too, but it was a possibility, right? And Clockwork wouldn’t have left him in this world unless there was something he had to deal with here, right? “Bus leaves in ten minutes,” he added, “You’d better hurry.”

It was at once a relief to be out of the house and away from Vlad, and horrifying to think of what he might be doing in their absence. He could think of at least a hundred things Vlad could do with everything in the downstairs lab, and that was without getting into all the personal stuff, which was enough to make Danny want to be sick all on its own. Less of a relief was Jazz shoving him lightly as soon as they were around the corner.

“Give me a lift? The bus is a _nightmare_ in the mornings.”

“Uh…” Danny stared at her. “You…uh, you’re not worried about me doing that?”

Jazz snorted, “Come _on_ , Danny. It’s this or put up with Dash trying to come onto me all the way into school! Flying involves less unwanted groping and more fresh air.”

“But wouldn’t that be…I don’t know…wildly irresponsible or something?” Danny tried, because the I-word was usually enough to get Jazz to lay off a bit.

Jazz rolled her eyes, “You can tell Vati on me if you really want to, but can we just get to school? I have a presentation due, and since _someone_ wrecked my car…”

Truthfully, there was nothing Danny wanted less than to be around people right now. He needed – he didn’t know what he needed, but a bit of time in which to scream about this situation was probably pretty high on the list. And since when did Jazz ask for rides to school? She’d only found out about the whole ghost thing a couple weeks ago – should she even be this open about knowing, if the time-travel thing never happened? Mom and Dad clearly didn’t know, if they were still hunting Phantom. Vlad clearly _did_ know, from what he’d been saying yesterday and all that meddling with Mom’s latest anti-ghost device over breakfast, and Danny had no idea how to even begin to pretend that this wasn’t the stuff of nightmares already, without a single ghost in sight.

“Danny? Earth to Danny?” Jazz huffed out a breath, “Ok, fine, the bus it is. Traitor.”

Danny made a noncommittal sort of noise, with the uncomfortable feeling that he was going to have to answer a lot of questions that way in the near future. He needed to talk to Sam and Tucker, pronto, before he gave himself away and ended up strapped to the operating table down in the lab. He didn’t know how this world’s Vlad had managed it for twenty years, but the fact that he had was pretty worrying all on its own. It was a bad lookout for Danny, when his own Vlad seemed so much less dangerous than this version was shaping up to be.

The flight over to school should’ve taken him half the time it did, but Danny needed the time to himself. He didn’t know what _else_ was wrong with this world. Jazz had been enough of a surprise, this version of Jazz who wore Packers jerseys and hadn’t started nagging him about his schoolwork or his safety or anything at all since he’d arrived here. The former, Danny could probably blame on Vlad and be reasonably certain that he was right. The latter was more difficult, but still, it felt lonely. He’d be lying if he said he never expected to miss Jazz’s overprotective streak, but she hadn’t so much as said he was acting oddly yet, and he knew he wasn’t passing well enough for her not to have noticed.

Casper High looked just the way it always had done. So did the rest of Amity Park, so had the Ghost Zone. It annoyed Danny on levels he didn’t like to think about – his whole world had been turned upside-down, there ought to be more to show for it – and when he landed behind the trees out back he was already in a foul mood. It didn’t get any better when he saw Sam and Tucker waiting on the bench under the trees, looking rather as if they’d just been informed that the world was going to blow up in half an hour and there was nothing they could do about it. Granted, that sort of thing wasn’t all that uncommon in Amity Park, but you’d have thought Danny would have been the first to hear about it, what with the ghost powers and all.

“Oh, there you are,” Sam said, rather coldly, when Danny appeared next to them. “Is Mr Fenton ok?”

It took Danny a gut-wrenching moment to remember she meant Vlad. “Could you…not call him that?” he said, rubbing at the back of his head, “I keep getting mixed up. And, yeah, he’s fine. He was making eyes at Mom over breakfast.”

What would in his old world have elicited at least a little bit of sympathy got him a disturbed look from Tucker here, and made Sam’s scowl darken.

“That’s his name,” she said flatly. “And I’m glad he’s alright – no thanks to you.”

“I’m sorry! I was a bit distracted by the whole ‘my whole world just got rewritten’ thing!”

Danny raked a hand through his hair. He wasn’t sorry, not really.  It was difficult to feel sorry for anything right now, when he remembered how ready Vlad had been to let Sam and Tucker die just to get his ecto-acne sorted out. He didn’t even know if it would’ve killed Vlad himself – half-ghosts were hard to kill, Danny was living proof of that.

“It probably wouldn’t have killed him,” he reasoned, “I mean…half-ghosts are hard to kill, and he’s had it before. You said he’d been having attacks on and off for years.”

“Yeah, but…” Tucker shuddered, “It’s pretty gruesome after a while – I mean, you, uh, you must’ve seen your world’s version a few years ago, right? I mean, it had mostly cleared up by the time we’d turned ten, but before that? Looked like half the guy’s face had melted off him.”

“I never met my world’s version until the reunion thing, I told you! I don’t know why he’s _here_! I mean…there’s only so much I could’ve done to cause this, right?”

Sam and Tucker exchanged another exasperated look.

“Guess it depends on what you did,” Tucker said apologetically.

Sam was still glaring at him. “So, basically, you went back in time and now Danny – our Danny – is just _gone_?” she demanded. “Or – is he in whatever screwed-up timeline it is you come from?”

“I don’t know, ok!” Danny snapped back, “I wasn’t _trying_ to do any of this! Come on, do you really think I want to spend any more time with that frootloop than I already have to?”

“ _Danny_!” Sam glared at him, and then dropped her gaze to glare at his boots.

“Look,” Tucker said, if only to fill the silence. “It’s not that we don’t _want_ to help, it’s just…all of this is…uh…what’s a tactful way of saying ‘crazy’?”

“I think ‘crazy’ covers it,” Sam agreed sourly. “And- Look, we’re not even sure we know you. I mean, you act a lot like our Danny, but…you’re not him. We don’t even know if half the things that happened to us happened to you. And- And if he really is…gone…”

“We need some time,” Tucker finished.

Danny stared at them, feeling as if, once again, the ground had been ripped away beneath his feet. “…time,” he said. “Right.”

He wanted to scream at them. He wanted some excuse to punch Vlad Masters, even if it meant some new plan was in the works. He _wanted_ to fly straight back to Clockwork’s castle and stay there until the ghost let him put things back the way they should be. Instead, he was standing here, watching his two best friends share awkward, guilty looks as none of them wanted to be the one to walk away first.

Sam was the one who finally clinched it, and when the bell rang, Danny followed a careful distance behind, wondering if he could get away with claiming illness and get out of this whole mess that way. Of course, then he’d have to go home, but that just gave him more time to find Clockwork and- and do _something_ to set this right.

Instead, he had English first thing, and the odds of this world’s him having had time to do the homework were practically nil. Danny could barely keep on top of it even in his own timeline, and yesterday had been hectic enough even _before_ the Clockwork thing got started. He didn’t even want to think what sort of havoc this world’s him might be wreaking in his own timeline – if it even still existed, that was. He could just _imagine_ what Vlad – the real Vlad – would make of it. That would be an opportunity as good as gift-wrapped, and Danny was doing his best not to think of what he’d be going back to if it really was just a straight switch. Maybe, if he got to Clockwork soon, he could mitigate the worst of the damage.

“Hey, Fen-turd!” yelled a familiar voice from somewhere behind him, just as Danny reached his locker. Danny groaned. Dash. Why couldn’t _he_ be pretending to be friendly in this world? It’d save so much trouble.

“Fail another spelling test?” he asked, turning to face Dash. Failed _something_ , anyway, because Danny hadn’t been around long enough to do anything to piss this version of Dash off yet.

“You bet I did! And I’m going to take every point of it out of your-”

Someone behind Dash cleared their throat.

“Dash, I hope you’re not giving my boy a hard time, there.”

Danny froze. Ok, that was Valerie. A Valerie who apparently had no problem at all showing off those ninth-degree martial arts skills in public in this world, going by the colour Dash had just gone. Did that mean she _wasn’t_ this world’s Red Huntress? Did this world even _have_ a Red Huntress? Plasmius was more than powerful enough to deal with one lost ghost dog, if he really was on the right side – or, he corrected himself, _pretending_ to be on the right side – in this universe.

“What if I a-aaargh!”

Val stepped neatly over Dash’s prone body and leaned against the locker next to Danny’s.

“Hey.”

Danny swallowed. “Uh…hey! You, uh, you didn’t have to do that. I mean…I appreciate it, but…I can handle Dash.”

“Sure you can.” Val smiled at him, wide and slightly smug and bright enough to almost distract Danny from the rest of this crazy world.

“Um…my mom wanted me to tell you they finished the wrist-guns,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant. “She wants you to come over for a field test or something after school.”

“Cool.” Val stretched, revealing a strip of brown midriff, and caught Danny’s hand. “Maybe you ought to look into borrowing a couple, number of times you get mixed up with all these ghost attacks.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Danny hardly heard what he was saying. He was too busy staring that their linked hands, and putting the pieces together.

Val grinned lopsidedly at him. “Carry on like that and I’m going to start thinking you don’t like me anymore,” she said, giving him a wicked look from under her eyelashes.

“I…really don’t think that’s likely to happen,” Danny said, before he thought better of it. Val grinned at him, and bumped her hip against his.

“Now, that’s what I like to hear. Come on, I’ll walk you to class.”

Danny snorted, “Scared I’ll get attacked by ghosts before I get there?”

“Happened before, hasn’t it? I’m beginning to think it might be genetic – ghost catnip or something.”

Danny laughed, though mostly to cover that he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Valerie’s hand was still so, so very warm in his. It was- unfair, so very, _very_ unfair. All this time wishing he’d had another chance with Valerie, and this was how it happened? In another world that would be gone soon enough, and where Val didn’t even know him, because one thing that was already perfectly clear was that the Danny Fenton everyone here remembered wasn’t the same person as the Danny Phantom who really existed. This whole world had sprung into existence yesterday, and yet Danny still felt like he’d been dropped into a surprise test on a subject he hadn’t even known he was supposed to be studying. Still, it was surprisingly comfortable to watch Val’s answering grin and walk in companionable silence to the door to Lancer’s classroom.

“Guess I’ll see you after school, then,” Val said, “Your friends still not talking to me?”

Danny smiled wanly, “They’re not even talking to _me_ right now,” he said, which was broadly true. “What do they even have against you?”

“Hey, I wouldn’t want my best friend putting a target on her back by dating a ghost-hunter either,” Val said, her smile dimming. “’course, with your parents already in the business, you’d think you’d already be in trouble there.”

“Right…you’d think so.” Danny’s heart sank. He stared down at his shoes, wondering what on earth he was supposed to do with this.

Val saw, but this world being screwy, she completely missed the point. “Still not past what happened this weekend, huh?”

“Not anything like over it,” Danny agreed miserably. “I just- I can’t really talk about it, but…”

“Yeah, I get it.” The worst part was, it really sounded like she did. Or at least, as if she understood what she must think had happened. “I’ll see you at lunch, then, if you don’t have other plans.”

“I don’t!” Danny said quickly, which was meant to come over as an assurance but sounded a bit too desperate for that. “Uh…I mean, I’d like that.”

“See you then, then,” Val said, and leant over to kiss his cheek before disappearing off along the corridor. For a moment, Danny just stood there, shell-shocked and wondering, absurdly, if there was any way to pick and choose which bits of this world to keep, if Clockwork ever let him try again. Probably not, because even if he’d done Danny a few favours, they were usually of the major, world-ending or life-saving varieties, not just…Danny tried to spot Val’s curls in the crowd, and let that thought slip away.

“Fenton! Looking forward to the test this morning?”

…scratch all of that. This world was a nightmare, and Danny wanted to go home.

“Uh…”

The test itself was worse. Ok, so it was going to happen in his own world too, and Danny had studied for it – sort of, as much as he could around ghost-hunting and the whole universe getting bent out of shape, anyway. Probably no-one would notice the difference between his crappy C-grade test and the crappy C-grade test his counterpart would’ve come up with. He’d almost forgotten there was going to _be_ a test after the Clockwork thing, and surely having the whole universe get rewritten on you excused at least a little bit of distraction, right? Were these even the same books he’d had to read in his own world? He didn’t think he’d changed things that much, but given what _else_ had apparently happened because of Clockwork’s slip it was an option worth looking into.

By the end, he’d answered only half the questions, gotten most of those so wrong even he could see it, and was living in fear of yet _another_ make-up assignment. He couldn’t even vent to Sam or Tucker about it, because neither of them were speaking to him. If there existed a hell beyond the ghost zone, it might look a bit like this.

He was snappish, moody and generally intolerable to be around all through his next few classes, not that it mattered when nobody was talking to him anyway. It wasn’t as if it was _his_ fault, he thought savagely. He’d never had a prayer of doing what he was supposed to in the past – not two weeks late and in the wrong place – and Clockwork hadn’t done a thing to help. If he’d only been able to get to the right day, they might not have had to worry about _any_ of this. Vlad would still be the lonely, pathetic frootloop living all alone in the castle in Wisconsin, Sam and Tucker would be talking to him and uninfected with any form of ecto-acne, there might not be any such _thing_ as ecto-acne.

On balance, he probably ought to have expected getting cornered by Lancer just at the beginning of lunch, but somehow he didn’t even consider the idea until he turned around to see Lancer standing right behind him. He cringed, readying himself for…well, probably detention, possibly another re-take, but when he spoke, Lancer’s voice was almost gentle.

“Your sister told me what happened,” he said. “And, under the circumstances, I am prepared to offer you a second chance on this test.”

Danny very nearly panicked before he realised what Lancer meant. Val had gotten a few free passes from teachers before her mom died, though he hadn’t known then that was what it was, and having a- a- sort-of parent? Stepparent? Parents’ live-in boyfriend…he honestly wasn’t sure what the official line on the Vlad thing was except that he wanted no part in it and would like to go back to a world where it had never happened as soon as possible. Whatever it was, a near relative being seriously ill over the weekend probably earned the same sort of leeway. His mind promptly informed him that he had just described Vlad Masters as ‘a near relative’, and went on strike.

“Uh…” he said uselessly. “Thanks? Wait…re-take the test? Again? I thought-”

Lancer gave him a perturbed look, “You haven’t needed to re-take a test of mine yet. Unless you’re referring to your math grades, which could be higher.”

“ _All_ my grades could be higher,” Danny grumbled. They hadn’t been great before, but he’d at least usually had a couple of B’s scattered in among the C’s before he started the whole superhero thing.

Lancer nodded, “Probably,” he admitted, “But so could anyone’s, and _this_ …” he held up the morning’s test, already graded. “Could be read as sarcasm if I didn’t know what caused it.”

He didn’t, of course. No-one did. It was the only good thing to be said about the ecto-acne mess, and even that was undermined by the fact that, if it hadn’t happened, Danny wouldn’t have had to worry about this situation at all.

“So…uh…when do I have to…”

Lancer considered it. “Next Saturday should give you enough time,” he said after a few seconds. “But I expect results, Fenton!”

Danny nodded, just wanting to get this conversation _over_ with. “I…uh…I’ll do my best? Wait, why was Jazz talking to you about this anyway?”

Lancer looked taken aback for a moment, then his face smoothed out. “Oh, some missed homework from my class with her. Still, she said Mr Fenton was recovering well.”

Danny nodded, trying desperately to ignore the maddened three-quarters of his brain that was still stuck on ‘I am now related to Plasmius’ and ‘my parents are involved with Vlad Masters’, along with some speculations about how that worked that would have been revolting even if Vlad _hadn’t_ been involved. And…wait, Jazz had missed homework? _Jazz_? Even the fact that Lancer seemed as surprised by that as Danny was didn’t do much to help with how little sense _that_ made.

Lancer gave him a long, searching sort of look, and sighed. “You can go,” he said, “But remember what I said about Saturday!”

Danny was too relieved to question it, his mind still screaming at him about how little sense it made for Lancer to be this soft on him, seriously ill…relatives…or no. It was just one more thing that made him want to curl up and crawl under a rock right now, and he was supposed to be meeting Valerie.

There was a bag lunch in his backpack, which was yet another of those weird little unexplained changes that didn’t seem actively sinister, but still made Danny’s brain itch, but Valerie, at least, was still at the table she’d adopted as her own after the dog thing happened. No-one else had ever even tried to sit there since, except during their brief relationship, and it felt weird to walk right by Sam and Tucker to sit with her. Neither Sam nor Tucker looked at him as he passed them, staring down at their food in that way that made it painfully clear they were avoiding his eyes.

“Sheesh, what happened with them?” Val asked when he sat down, her eyes flicking over to Danny, Sam and Tucker’s usual table.

Danny shrugged. He didn’t know what would count as a convincing excuse in this world, and the less than twenty-five percent of his brain still in working order _really_ didn’t feel up to figuring it out. “I…uh…said something Sam didn’t like yesterday,” he settled on in the end.

Valerie grinned. “Her loss.” She sketched an absent-minded pattern on the table. “So…”

For the first time, Danny realised he had no idea what to say to her. That was wrong all on its own – it was what he’d liked so much about being with her, that he could never be at a loss for words, the way they had always found something to talk about.

“I’m thinking of taking a trip up to the observatory tonight,” he said, mostly to provide him with an excuse for why he was going to avoid going home for as long as possible, and never mind the punishment for breaking curfew.

Val’s eyes flicked downwards. “Yeah…I…probably won’t be able to make it. Patrol, y’know?”

“I know?” Danny said without thinking. “I mean…uh, yeah.” He forced a grin. “You know that makes me sound like Lois Lane, right?”

“I was thinking more Vicki Vale,” Val said slyly, “You don’t get kidnapped enough to be Lois.”

Danny laughed, “How do you know? I could just be rescuing myself. It’s the twenty-first century, I’m allowed to do that now.”

“Funny thing, actually,” Val was saying, “Still haven’t caught up to that creepy guy ghost on the motorcycle. He came screaming out of that creepy ghost world place-”

“Ghost zone,” Danny corrected automatically, his mind already on what this might mean.

“Yeah, that…came screaming out of there yesterday, and disappeared before we could get a clear bead on him.”

Danny shifted uneasily, “So…you’ve seen this ghost before, I’m guessing?”

“What- Oh, c’mon, Danny, I tell you all the good stories.” She elbowed him, sliding over to lean her shoulder against his.

Danny opened his mouth to say something – he wasn’t sure what – and he could see his breath in front of him. Oh. Oh, _no_.

There was a shrill beeping noise from somewhere in Valerie’s bag, and she fished out something that looked like a cross between Tucker’s PDA and the Fenton Finder to frown at it.

“You would have to be a complete moron not to notice-” it began, but Valerie pressed a button on the side.

“Looks like duty calls,” she said, and kissed him too quickly for him to try and reciprocate before hurrying off, probably to get changed into her Red Huntress gear and head out. Danny waited perhaps ten seconds before following suit.

He spotted the shadow first as it flickered across the cafeteria, causing trips, stumbles, spillages and at least one compromisingly torn bit of clothing. Dash and Kwan somehow both managed to fall over their own feet and land in a trashcan, Paulina’s bag tore itself open and deposited all her possessions on the floor, which provided a big enough distraction to let Danny slip away and go ghost without being spotted.

Johnny 13 was hovering outside the school when Danny got there, still on his bike and grinning.

“Finally come out to play, kid?” Johnny asked, leaning one elbow on the handlebars.

“Sorry, Johnny,” Danny said through gritted teeth, flying up to meet him, “Playtime’s over.”

A burst of spectral energy from the headlight of Johnny’s motorbike made him veer sharply, twisting around mid-flight to put in some answering blows of his own. Another blast from Johnny caught him square across the shoulder, flipping him over in mid-air, and in trying to reorient himself Danny almost missed the shadow coming up behind him and had to turn intangible to get away.

“So,” he called, “Working alone now? Kitty finally ditch your slimy-”

“Shadow! Take him down!”

The shadow lunged for him again, and this time it caught him, throwing him directly into the path of Johnny’s motorbike, which swerved sharply to catch Danny side-on, throwing him through the front wall of Casper High and into what looked like a senior biology class. It took a while to get out, but when he did, Johnny was still there, just waiting around. Which…ok, if there was any sort of plan here, it was either a pretty stupid plan, or Johnny was only here as a diversion. And Danny didn’t think Johnny had the sort of attention span necessary for that sort of thing.

“What d’you want, Johnny?” he demanded, firing off another blast of spectral energy at that motorbike, sending the thing tipping perilously sideways before Johnny could right it again, and darting away from the school, Johnny racing after him.

“Relax, kid, relax,” the ghost called after him, “Just blowing off some steam. Speaking of which...”

Another blast from the headlight of Johnny’s motorbike, and Danny banked left, zipping around again to catch Johnny from behind with a blast of blue-white energy that knocked him clean off his bike-

Wait. Blue-white energy?

“Well, well, well. Looks like I got two for the price of one!”

Danny groaned, and looked around to see- Ok, that was just unfair. And suspicious. Because there Valerie was, on a hoverboard and dressed in a red hazmat suit with a massive pair of goggles over her eyes, and armed with the sort of anti-ghost gear Danny was certain had come from Vlad in the original time. Was he still equipping her here? Oh, god, was it possible Danny not only had to deal with Vlad being involved with his parents but Vlad being involved with his parents and _still trying to kill him?_ What- What did he even want? He _had_ Maddie, as Danny had been horribly reminded that morning, wasn’t that the whole reason for the Plasmius thing?

“I don’t want to fight you!” he called, hanging back a bit as Johnny looked from him to Val and back again.

“So…what is this?” Johnny said, frowning. “Some kinda lovers’ quarrel? Because I know what those-”

“We’re not lovers!” Valerie snapped at him. “Stop grinning, Phantom. I’ve got ten kinds of hurt for you right here!”

She aimed…that looked like a Fenton Bazooka…at him, and Danny only barely had time to think that this was going to _suck_ before she fired. Behind him, Johnny dived for his bike, and if Danny hadn’t turned intangible just out of reflexive panic the fight would probably have ended very differently as Johnny roared past them, driving directly upwards with his shadow screaming behind him.

It was then, over Johnny’s shoulder, that Danny saw it – a blur of white, the shadow of dark hair that looked all too much like horns, the gleam of red eyes. It was instinct, again, which had him take aim and get off at least one blast of energy before Plasmius closed with them, even as Johnny spun his motorbike in mid-air and set off at top speed in the opposite direction, wild-eyed and _terrified_ as Danny had never seen him before.

“Another shot like that, and I might believe you wanted to hit me,” said Vlad Plasmius, with a distinctly superior air. “Really, Phantom, I _know_ I taught you better than that.”

Danny swallowed. One more shot like that, and he’d have given himself away. “Who says that wasn’t what I was aiming at?” he said, just from sheer force of habit. The unimpressed look he got in return was the most familiar thing he’d seen since he got landed in this crazy world.

“Hey, freaks!” Danny’s head whipped around at the sound of the click and whoosh of a Fenton Bazooka being reloaded. He’d almost forgotten Valerie was there in the panic of Vlad’s arrival. Valerie was grinning, ear to ear, and…yeah, Danny would probably describe that expression as evil (or at least morally dubious) glee. “Lucky for me, I’ve still got two targets! Unlucky for you…”

“Oh, crud…” Danny muttered. Vlad, apparently unbothered, flicked up a hand to create a shield, and raised his eyebrows at Danny, who scowled. “Show-off.”

“Hardly. It only counts as ‘showing off’ if you are unable to do the same. Unless you’re forgetting _all_ your lessons now…”

There was an edge to his voice that wasn’t quite like what Danny was used to, but the words were familiar enough. If this was how things were between this world’s Danny and Vlad, maybe this world’s Vlad wasn’t as good an actor as Danny had thought. Not like it took much to fool his parents anyway, from how long Danny had been managing it.

Vlad’s expression froze, however, as Valerie twisted around, and produced another weapon from the belt at her hip. This one was smaller, sized like an ordinary handgun, and next to the bazooka it actually looked pretty unimpressive.

“Move!” Vlad snapped at him, and Danny almost wanted to stay in place just to spite him, but it was about then that Val levelled the gun at him, and maybe in this case discretion really _was_ the better part of valour.

Valerie’s grin widened, if such a thing were possible, still further. “Don’t think turning invisible will save you, ghost! _This_ …” she twirled the gun casually in her hand, “Little beauty ought to put you down for good – rips you apart from whatever passes for the heart outward. Mrs F’s own design, this time, so no more little _glitches_ for you to take advantage of.”

“ _Maddie_ ,” Vlad hissed, sounding so exasperated that Danny almost laughed.

“Didn’t see this coming?” he couldn’t resist asking.

Vlad shook his head, looking genuinely worried, which was strange enough on its own. “I thought we had more time,” he muttered, “She only mentioned having the idea a week ago-”

“Never mind _that_!” Danny veered sharply leftwards, Vlad hurled himself to the right, as there was a sound like a gunshot – a _real_ gunshot, from a gun meant to shoot something other than ghosts – and something whistled by, just overhead.

“More where that came from!” Val yelled, zipping a little higher – where did she even get a hoverboard from in this world?

“I told you!” Danny yelled back. “I don’t want to fight you! We’re all on the same side here-”

“Oh, yeah? What side d’you think that is, ghost?” Valerie thumbed back the hammer, the hoverboard rising higher so that she could look down on him. She did not see Vlad rising up from behind her, and Danny couldn’t stop himself-

“Look out!”

Val snorted. “You’ve got to do better than that, ghost-” she started, and Vlad _struck_ , knocking the hoverboard out from under Valerie’s feet and batting her away. It was over in a matter of seconds, and Danny didn’t even realise the gun had gone off until he was falling through the air, flickering from ghost form to human to ghost again, and cold…so cold. It was not pain, precisely. It was something so, so much worse than pain. It felt like – like melting, like being unmade…it was-

“Phantom- Danny- _DANIEL_!”

The rush of cold air and he’s still falling, perhaps he will feel the fall until it ends-

“Danny! Danny, can you hear- What were you _thinking_ \- Danny? _Danny_?”

He wasn’t falling. There was an arm around his shoulders, something red and glowing above him, and as he blinked his eyes and the world re-focused itself, Plasmius’s face came into focus, red eyes wide and- afraid. He’d seen Vlad afraid before – of Pariah Dark, of his future counterpart, of…well, the point was, he’d seen it – but never…never quite like this. Vlad’s hand was on his elbow, hauling him to his feet – Danny hadn’t even realised he was lying half-prone on a rooftop until then. He felt weak and dizzy and achy, and even if he knew that the sane, the sensible, the _right_ thing to do would be to shrug off Vlad’s hand and try to reverse all of this, but somehow he just couldn’t find the strength. He tried to take a step and stumbled.

“Steady,” Vlad said quickly, his arm tightening and sliding down to hold Danny up, just under his arms. “You’ve had quite a shock, little badger. Lean on me, now…that’s it…”

“’m fine,” Danny mumbled, through a jaw that somehow wouldn’t unclamp itself.

Vlad nodded – Danny felt his chin digging into the top of his head. “You’re fine. Of course. You’ve just been _shot_ , but _clearly_ , you’re fine. Don’t lie to me, Daniel. Don’t ever lie to me. If you’re hurt-” he broke off, looking pained, his eyes wide and his teeth gritted. And then, so suddenly Danny had no time to defend against it, Vlad hugged him, so hard that if Danny had been in human form he’d have had all the breath squeezed out of him.

His brain came online again with an unpleasant squelching, jerking feeling that felt like some complicated mechanical creation with syrup in the gears. He could _hear_ Vlad Masters muttering into his hair about he’d been _so frightened, god, Danny, never scare me like that again, Danny, I can’t lose you, don’t_ ever _-_

“I told you,” he said peevishly, slightly muffled against Vlad’s shoulder. “I’m fine, V- Vati.” As if the whole universe was conspiring to prove him wrong, another wave of dizziness washed over him, his stomach feeling as if it had been squeezed through a very thin tube and then tied into knots. He swallowed against the nausea that thought provoked and forced a smile. “Besides, what was I supposed to do? Val’s _good_.” He wasn’t sure if he meant that as ‘good at ghost-hunting’ or just in general – either seemed to apply.

“Too good,” Vlad said grimly. “I’m going to need to arrange an accident for those guns. Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. Can you distract your father for me while I get them out of the way?”

“Uh…”

The instinct to not reveal himself warred with the instinct to not give Vlad an inch, particularly where Jack was concerned, both completely overturned by the memory of the warm, delighted look on Vlad’s face on the day Danny had come to this world, as he had leant comfortably back against Jack’s chest and listened to how the cure had been found. It was not a memory that felt quite comfortable in Danny’s head, and it made him wish that the inside of his own mind came with doors he could barricade to keep the thought of it out.

Vlad gave him a sidelong look. “You’re meeting her tonight, aren’t you?” he said, and he sounded so tired that Danny could almost pity him. “Daniel – I realise I am the last person on earth with any right to give you this advice…”

“Then _don’t_ ,” Danny said sullenly, pulling away. “I’m fine. I can handle it.”

Vlad glared at him, “She nearly killed you just now! Not that _that_ has ever seemed to concern you at all.” He ran a hand over his face and grimaced. “You’re too much like me.”

“I am _nothing_ -” Danny started, furious, but broke off. It was too easy to fall into old patterns, even when he could barely stand and Vlad was being…ugh… _concerned_. And paternal. It was weird. Incredibly weird. And deeply, deeply uncomfortable. Playing out a situation he had once described as literally his worst nightmare was meant to be awful – so what was Danny supposed to do when it wasn’t? Vlad was still looking quizzically down at him, but there was nothing of malice in his expression, still. Danny tried to remind himself that the only reason for any of this was that Vlad had won, that he _had_ what he wanted, but that didn’t erase the fact that it was there, and Danny had no idea what to do with it.

“I…uh…should probably get back,” he muttered.

Vlad frowned at him. “You’re sure you’re alright? That was a very near miss you just had. If you’re hurt-”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Danny said roughly, shrugging Vlad’s hand off his shoulder. “I don’t know why you’re worrying about it. It’s not like-” _Not like you haven’t done worse_ , that sentence ended, and…yeah, Danny wasn’t going to touch that with a bargepole just in case it set Vlad off.

Vlad looked him over, then sighed. “Very well. Go on, get to class so I don’t get another call about you skipping.”

Danny went, feeling heavy and sluggish and dull and knowing that, if it weren’t for the effects of whatever it was Val had hit him with, he’d probably be screaming by now. Or maybe he wouldn’t. He might want to, but somehow no matter how much you wanted to, there was always something to stop you from just breaking down and screaming in the middle of town. What he really needed, right now, was some way of knowing what was going _on_. What Vlad’s scheme was, how to stop it, and then how to get out of here and back to his own world with the information he needed to cure Sam and Tucker and never speak of any of this madness ever again.

There was still enough of lunch left to let him find an unused computer in the library, and even if Sam and Tucker weren’t talking to him, the internet ought to turn up _something_.

It didn’t.

Or at least, nothing useful. Searching for ‘Vlad Masters’ turned up a dozen people, none even remotely connected to Amity Park. And, when Danny got over himself enough to try it, ‘Vlad Fenton’ turned up nothing but Fenton Works itself and a Facebook page consisting mostly of family photos and pictures of the cat – Brie, he thought her name was –  that he’d seen at breakfast. He had to turn away for a few deep breaths when his hand slipped and brought up an old photo of his counterpart and Vlad at the Air and Space Museum, both beaming ear-to-ear and looking, to anyone who didn’t know how wrong all of this was, like an ideal family. People tended to look that way, in photographs, if you didn’t know everything that was going on behind that snapshot. He got more and better results for ‘Plasmius’, but that wasn’t exactly hard with how little either ‘Masters’ or ‘Fenton’ had turned up. Plasmius, the terror of Amity Park, subject of any number of weird old news articles about Jack and Maddie Fenton humiliatingly failing to capture what seemed to be almost a local bogeyman. And then, during the same fight with Walker that had gotten Danny branded as public enemy number one, the turnaround had happened and his counterpart and Plasmius were suddenly the town heroes after weeks for Danny and years for Plasmius of every paper in town accusing them of everything short of murder. The whole town thought Plasmius was…ok, not the best thing ever, but maybe more of a Batman-type, dark and sinister but probably on the side of the angels. And, what was worse, it was at least partly Danny’s fault. Two more follow-up searches also came up blank – no VladCo, no Dalv group, no _anything_. All the sub-companies of Vlad’s he’d ever heard of were owned by other people and, apparently, always had been. Danny refreshed the page a few times, but it didn’t seem to change the fact that there was absolutely no evidence online to suggest that Vlad was anything other than what this whole world kept insisting he was. Vlad had lost everything, essentially, between the real timeline and this one, and yet Danny didn’t think he’d ever seen him so happy. Trust the frootloop to come out on top even in this. He wondered if Vlad would see it that way.


End file.
